♥LOVE TIP  – Tuesday February 21, 2012

Hello treasured and valued ♥friends

Just wanted to say a warm and ♥LOVE-ing Hellooooooooooo to you all from AGRA where we arrived tonight…….and say I am thinking about you and missing connecting in…..and wondering whether you’ve missed me. Have you♥

I’ve been finding it extremely difficult to write as you can imagine by my absence…..Each time I have got to the computer I’ve been organizing the many hundreds of photos of the time we spent in Ambala City for both ♥Zoe and Gaurav’s and ♥Shruti and Mohit’s weddings…..there are so many aspects and detail to all the ceremonies and I want to share it using photos… which I will get back to… but now it seems important to just touch base and update you a little….

After ‘surviving’ all the ceremonies of the two amazing weddings…….7 of us are ‘on Tour’ for the week with today in DELHI and tonight after 5 hours of driving in our Tempo Traveler we have arrived at the Radisson Agra Hotel where we’ve been upgraded to a business suite – WooHoo!….. An early morning rise tomorrow is planned to see the sun rise over the TAJ  MAHAL  ……then onto AGRA  FORT and JAIPUR…..following the route of the Golden Triangle…

There have been a number of challenges throughout the weeks……one of which has been the food and a bug that has passed through most of us – literally 🙂 – with rumbling, sick bellies and the ‘runs’…I awoke this morning to my second bout of it in the two weeks since we have been here and my experience of Delhi was mainly tucked up in our hotel room so nauseous and unable to take my head off the pillow other than to race to the toilet….fortunately by now we are well equipped with a range of  ways to treat it…..so happily bouts don’t last more than a day…….but I can tell you after 2 weeks of curries I’m hanging out for some fresh salads…..

India is such a a land of contrasts with the juxtaposition of the incredibly rich and opulent and in fact, I think wasteful, with the most intensely poor, dirty and neglected………….I am reminding myself constantly to be using our ♥TOOL of crossing the bridge….and I’ve decided to assign February as the month of crossing the bridge…

Question for you: Whose world are you needing to visit♥ What is getting in the way of you being able to see through their eyes♥

Up here in the north the earth is quite dry and dusty and parched and the air foggy, smoky and polluted……the sky a permanent grey-blue and not the bright blue we are used to… Busy overcrowded, congested ‘freeways’ contrasted with the narrowest of narrow ‘streets’ or more like lane-ways in the market areas….roads covered with all kinds of transport – cars….. and bicycles with all sorts of trays behind carrying anything and everything piled high and even higher….. bicycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, scooters, buses, tractors…..piled high with either people or the goods they are carrying…..and the incessant horn blowing and head-lights flashing…….and everyone (even the trucks) trying to squash themselves into the tiniest of places not caring about anyone or anything that gets in the way….the code seems to be he who is the most pushy and loud wins/succeeds….

There’s lots to weave around and amazingly they do….the contents of the shops and market stalls spilling out onto the ‘road’…..and the people……walking everywhere….sitting everywhere, anywhere…. And not forgetting the cows…….. and more cows…… and the pigs…. and piglets….. and dogs………all just wandering everywhere…..

An enormous saving grace is the amazing vibrancy of the women’s clothes….such a stunning contrast with the browns and greys and dirt and more dirt and rubbish and rubble is such stunning BRIGHTNESS of the women’s saris and salwah kameez’s….

I keep coming face to face with how to justify the great discrepancy between the opulence and the poverty. I like my daughter’s explanation which feels like acceptance of it which is we’ve all chosen to incarnate into our soul’s purpose for this life…Many times when visiting third world countries and other cultures I have the thought – “there but for the grace of God go I”…..It takes away the judgement and replaces it with acceptance and humility and gratefulness …….it’s a great lesson in truly crossing the bridge and imagining what it is like to see it through their eyes….though I must admit there are times when I falter like in Delhi today where at most lights you stop there are hordes of people tapping on the car windows begging for money…. dirty bedraggled women carrying equally grubby and scruffy kids…….

Anyways Lovelies, I must be off to bed to be up early at 6.30am… quoting the tourist brochures – ‘At sunrise we visit one of the greatest sights of one’s lifetime!’….wouldn’t want to miss it!

Sending wishes your way for many adventures in your life that are full and enriching.. ♥LOVE and Blessings, reflectively Susie…..